Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, it's Jake here, and the launch of deep
Speaker 1: Cover Season two is just over a month away. We're
Speaker 1: hard at work putting it together for you. It involves
Speaker 1: political corruption, a legendary hitman, an infamous murder trial, and
Speaker 1: an undercover operative who's been on the run from the
Speaker 1: Mob for decades. The moment I put the wire around
Speaker 1: the first time, my life was over. I couldn't never
Speaker 1: practice law anymore. I could never stay in the city anymore.
Speaker 1: If it ever got out, they would kill me in
Speaker 1: a heartbeat. So stay tuned for a season two of
Speaker 1: deep Cover mob Land coming your way January twenty fourth.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, I wanted to share a fun conversation
Speaker 1: that takes us back to season one of deep Cover.
Speaker 1: If you were a fan of the first season, I
Speaker 1: think you're really going to like this behind the scenes story.
Speaker 1: And if you haven't listened to deep Cover season one yet,
Speaker 1: now is a great time to go back and catch
Speaker 1: up on it. You might remember from episode one. Deep
Speaker 1: Cover started when I got a hold of a novel.
Speaker 1: The book had no cover, no copyright page. I mean,
Speaker 1: not even a title or an author listed. It just
Speaker 1: said Spring nineteen eighty two. And then it started. A
Speaker 1: single sodium street light out on the far edge of
Speaker 1: a parking lot, shown down on a pay phone. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is the actor Walton Goggins, who did all
Speaker 1: the voice over readings from Ned's novel. From that lonely
Speaker 1: pool of light, the darkness of the parking lot reached
Speaker 1: out a good twenty five yards before the glow of
Speaker 1: Neon beer signs signaled the borders of another America. This
Speaker 1: was the lawless America. This was the rebel yell. This
Speaker 1: was easy money, fast bikes, and girls that were easier
Speaker 1: and faster than both. Eventually, of course, I met the
Speaker 1: guy who the novel was based on, Ned Timmins, and
Speaker 1: he told me that this book, this novel about him,
Speaker 1: had many different authors. Over the years, Ned worked with
Speaker 1: at least four different writers. These were people he hired
Speaker 1: to tell his story. What I had read apparently was
Speaker 1: a mashup of all their efforts. Plus Ned himself worked
Speaker 1: on it. He's still tinkering with it. In fact, if
Speaker 1: there any book editors listening, give him a call. Anyway,
Speaker 1: I always kind of wondered who these writers were, you know,
Speaker 1: what their take on Ned was, Because in a way,
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like they were my predecessors. And
Speaker 1: then shortly after deep Cover was released, one of them
Speaker 1: reached out to me. His name is James Coyne. He's
Speaker 1: a screenwriter who lives out in southern California. He told
Speaker 1: me he worked with Ned on and off over the years.
Speaker 1: So one afternoon I called up James to hear all
Speaker 1: about it. He started by telling me about the first
Speaker 1: time he met Ned. I think he was much more
Speaker 1: understated than I expected him to be based on the story.
Speaker 1: You know, he's very kind of you know, he blends
Speaker 1: right in right, it was sort of a standard Midwest
Speaker 1: American and how he dresses and carries himself. And it's
Speaker 1: not until you kind of see, you know, you start
Speaker 1: looking him in the eye, that you start to sense
Speaker 1: the depths there. But he stands out in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: for being very normal kind of Midwest American, but in
Speaker 1: any other place in the country, you know, you'd walk
Speaker 1: right by him in the airport and never know who
Speaker 1: he was. It's interesting, I think, you know, so he
Speaker 1: had gone through he had worked with other writers, and
Speaker 1: I knew that they had kind of come before me.
Speaker 1: I really didn't know a lot of the details. I
Speaker 1: had seen what it turns out was an early version
Speaker 1: of your novel. It was kind of mysterious. It didn't
Speaker 1: even have all the pages and whatnot. But I got this.
Speaker 1: But I did understand that this is a guy who
Speaker 1: had been trying to tell his story in one form
Speaker 1: or another for a long time, like well over a
Speaker 1: decade before I ever met him. I think his efforts
Speaker 1: went back, you know, more than a decade before meeting me.
Speaker 1: You know, yeah, because I saw I saw maybe a
Speaker 1: chapter and a half of somebody else's work, which was
Speaker 1: attempting to be a much more straightforward kind of um
Speaker 1: you know piece. I can't remember the writer's name again.
Speaker 1: It was you know, it came in a box with
Speaker 1: you know, uh, some photographs of you know, shrunken heads,
Speaker 1: and yeah, I think I saw the same box. We
Speaker 1: both got the same box. So I sent the box
Speaker 1: back to him at some point. It was it was
Speaker 1: difficult to parse, um and didn't really have an organizational principle,
Speaker 1: so it was it was hard to to get into.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I was. I was certainly not the
Speaker 1: first person to come in, you know. I the novel
Speaker 1: was great, and it was it's interesting I'll share with you.
Speaker 1: I did a first episode of the podcast without the
Speaker 1: novel and it and it didn't quite it didn't work.
Speaker 1: And so someone you know, and also there was like
Speaker 1: not an obvious point of entry for me as the storyteller,
Speaker 1: and I guess I was just telling someone how it
Speaker 1: had come onto my radar, and I started talking about
Speaker 1: the novel, and then someone said, why don't you just
Speaker 1: say that, like you know, it's like, why don't you
Speaker 1: just tell like the like the way it really began
Speaker 1: and the most obvious point of entry. So then I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I start telling the story of the novel. And then
Speaker 1: we started reading it. I realized the novel was so
Speaker 1: great because it was this one version of Ned, like
Speaker 1: in a way, we all have the novel version of ourselves,
Speaker 1: right like I have it, you have it. We all
Speaker 1: have like the kind of you know, the way we
Speaker 1: would like to see ourselves. And so and this was
Speaker 1: just actually written out in novel form, and so it
Speaker 1: ended up being like an important part of like the
Speaker 1: layering of who of who Ned was. And it's clear
Speaker 1: it was clear to me that that you would spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time getting to know this guy and
Speaker 1: also kind of channeling his voice. How how did you
Speaker 1: channel his voice? Because you know, having spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time with Ned, the voice in the novel often
Speaker 1: does sound exactly like him. We're using tape recordings, you're
Speaker 1: taking notes. How were you doing it? For me? The
Speaker 1: joy of listening to Ned and and and hearing these
Speaker 1: stories and and you know, the sort of there's a
Speaker 1: there's a deep aspect of wish fulfillment in what Ned did,
Speaker 1: right that from a certain point of view, right like
Speaker 1: you know that you know he's he's like, he's like
Speaker 1: tell me out of a Walter Hill screenplay, right Like
Speaker 1: there's a you can you can feel the movie. You're right,
Speaker 1: you know, Chimmans, I want your patche and your gun
Speaker 1: on my desk, right like, you know, there's a um
Speaker 1: And so I think for me in getting into writing
Speaker 1: the book, and what was so much fun about writing
Speaker 1: the book was was breathing into that aspect of the
Speaker 1: wish fulfillment that is inherent to Ned's story anyway. And
Speaker 1: so if I adopted some of his language, or if
Speaker 1: I subconsciously picked up up on some of his tone,
Speaker 1: I think that's just kind of naturally part of my process.
Speaker 1: You know, I think everything I write sort of tends
Speaker 1: to have the tone of what it wants to be.
Speaker 1: You try to find a tone that suits the material.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, Ned provided all of that
Speaker 1: over he and I spending so many years together talking
Speaker 1: about these things. You know, I love that you were
Speaker 1: fascinated by the pig. You know that one of the
Speaker 1: screenplays opens on the pig with the mush, with it
Speaker 1: being fed the meth up onions, because that was just
Speaker 1: such an amazing image, and you're like, I got see
Speaker 1: that fucking pig on screen. The pig was great. Oh,
Speaker 1: the pig's amazing. There's a big field and there's mountains
Speaker 1: up each side, and there's some hillbility there at the gate,
Speaker 1: and he meets us and gets as soon as gate
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's just a two track sage
Speaker 1: brush cactus and just high mountain desert and we're getting
Speaker 1: near the barn and outcomes this freaking five hundred pound pig,
Speaker 1: I mean, a big pig. And he said, what the
Speaker 1: fuck is it? You know that's the guard hogs. What mean?
Speaker 1: He said, well, he smells people if they're you know,
Speaker 1: and the mountains are trying to survey us or whatever hills.
Speaker 1: And that's true a pig. He has one of the
Speaker 1: best noses in the world. What really surprised Ned is
Speaker 1: what these hillbillies are feeding their prized guard pig. They'd
Speaker 1: soak a bug onion, sweet onion and math and throw
Speaker 1: it to the pig. The pig lollved it. I mean,
Speaker 1: he's like, you know, he wanted he wanted a fucking onion,
Speaker 1: and you know, I didn't really trust him because he's
Speaker 1: really fucking big and he's got tossling shit. And this
Speaker 1: was Ned's life now, sneaking past a drugged up pig.
Speaker 1: What a detail. What was really interesting is that the
Speaker 1: moments you chose to use some excerpts from the book
Speaker 1: and with the music, is that what what what I
Speaker 1: found is that all of a sudden, like some part
Speaker 1: of the story became very real and alive in a
Speaker 1: way that you know, sort of the more journalistic approach
Speaker 1: can get distant, right, like you can feel a step
Speaker 1: removed when somebody is as clinically accurate as you were being.
Speaker 1: And yet somehow when the music and the story and
Speaker 1: all of that comes, it starts to become alive in
Speaker 1: a way that I think nonfiction has a much harder
Speaker 1: time being than fiction. No, And I'm so glad that
Speaker 1: we got Walter Goggins to read it because originally, in
Speaker 1: just early versions, I was reading it and it didn't
Speaker 1: have the same effect because you really wanted it to
Speaker 1: have kind of a distinct voice, and like, it was
Speaker 1: just much more effective to have it removed from me.
Speaker 1: He's fantastic. They'll kill us, Bruce, we fuck up and
Speaker 1: they'll kill us. You understand, no one will even find
Speaker 1: the bodies to shoot us and stuck us in a
Speaker 1: Vada ascid of some shit. You have any idea how
Speaker 1: fucking dangerous this shit is? I nodded, but Toby grabbed
Speaker 1: him by the arm leaned in close, close enough he
Speaker 1: could smell the ether, the cigarettes and the bo do you, brothers?
Speaker 1: You fucking better because it's me and you out there, danglin,
Speaker 1: right over the goddamn edge. Let me go back to
Speaker 1: a question that I was getting at earlier, which is
Speaker 1: that so you start working with them, and you're saying
Speaker 1: that maybe as much as a decade before that, he
Speaker 1: was working on telling the story, which seems possible to me,
Speaker 1: which begs this bigger question of why was it so
Speaker 1: important to Ned to tell the story? He went to
Speaker 1: enormous trouble and enormous expense over decades to do it,
Speaker 1: which is just really unusual. What was driving that? Why
Speaker 1: was it so important to him? Do you not sense
Speaker 1: from him that he wants a certain validation for his
Speaker 1: role in this and that he did feel somewhat sidelined
Speaker 1: and forgotten in an investigation that took so much from
Speaker 1: him and cost him so much personally and professionally, that
Speaker 1: somehow it would all be okay if if the story
Speaker 1: was out there in the world and that he got
Speaker 1: the credit and recognition that he felt he was due. Yes, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think there's some of that.
Speaker 1: And then I think, too he gets like, you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people around him say, holy shit,
Speaker 1: this should be a movie, Holy shit, this should be
Speaker 1: a book. You know, like, this is incredible, what a story?
Speaker 1: You know, why doesn't anyone know this? And you know,
Speaker 1: how many times do you hear that before you start
Speaker 1: to think to yourself, you know, they're probably right. So
Speaker 1: so what is he hired you to write the like?
Speaker 1: How did that work? He had he had hired me
Speaker 1: to work on the scripts, and then when we had
Speaker 1: kind of hit the wall, he approached me about doing
Speaker 1: a book. So just to be clear here, it starts off.
Speaker 1: It starts off as you writing this script. So he
Speaker 1: hired you initially to write a script for a future
Speaker 1: and correct correct, which I did, you know again many
Speaker 1: many versions of and worked with some pretty high level
Speaker 1: people to get into a good position. And uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think the issue where our story kind of hit
Speaker 1: a brick wall in Hollywood especially was, you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's difficult with marijuana, right like, you know, these guys
Speaker 1: are bringing in hundreds of thousands of pounds of marijuana,
Speaker 1: They're doing billions of dollars worth of business. But it's
Speaker 1: it's just it's an inherently less threatening drug than you know,
Speaker 1: if if these guys have been importing, you know, bargeloads
Speaker 1: of cocaine, you know, this story would I think have
Speaker 1: been a movie ten years ago, because cocaine is somehow
Speaker 1: so much more. You know, it's it's bigger, it's sexier,
Speaker 1: it's more dangerous. You can turn it into crack and
Speaker 1: ruin an entire community, right you know, you can, you know,
Speaker 1: you can let loose the shitload of marijuana on an
Speaker 1: entire community, and you know, fast food sales go up, right,
Speaker 1: It's just not It just doesn't have the same impact
Speaker 1: as as some of the dirty or nasty or drugs
Speaker 1: that are out there. And I think that that really
Speaker 1: harmed our ability to market the story. That's fascinating. Did
Speaker 1: did did they? Were you told that explicitly we're people
Speaker 1: going back to producers? Or I yeah, I heard that
Speaker 1: explicitly in meetings. You know, could we could we up
Speaker 1: the cocaine factor? You know, it's like, wow, not really right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're being honest to the story. After
Speaker 1: the break, more on my conversation with James. Do you
Speaker 1: guys then come up with a whose idea is it
Speaker 1: to write a novel? You know, I think it was
Speaker 1: Ned who came to me with that idea, and it
Speaker 1: says like, let's just turn this into a book, or yeah,
Speaker 1: let's turn this into a book. You know the story
Speaker 1: better than anyone else at this point, you know, I
Speaker 1: like you, you know, um, you know, what could you
Speaker 1: what could we possibly do this for financially? And I
Speaker 1: sort of looked at, you know, where I was and
Speaker 1: what I was doing, and I said, you know, look,
Speaker 1: I can give you about twelve weeks, right, and so
Speaker 1: this is what I need to live for the next
Speaker 1: twelve weeks, and if you can afford that, then I'll
Speaker 1: write you the book. You wrote that book in twelve weeks. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. That's like a full length novel and pretty
Speaker 1: good shape. Well yeah, and that's well you have you
Speaker 1: have the much bridge version. My first draft was I
Speaker 1: think somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty five to ninety
Speaker 1: thousand words. So you're working on the book when he's
Speaker 1: when you're going over these like what do you like?
Speaker 1: What do you make of the stories? For example that
Speaker 1: he tells you about Toby, For example, I was Toby
Speaker 1: was a character that fascinated me. I couldn't actually talk
Speaker 1: to him because he had passed away, as you know,
Speaker 1: I talked to his son. I remember writing the motorcycles
Speaker 1: with them with me on the back. He was just
Speaker 1: kind of reckless and dangeroed. I was screaming holding on
Speaker 1: for dear life, right, and he just thought it was funny. Um,
Speaker 1: But that was him. It's he wasn't There wasn't anything
Speaker 1: that that that he was afraid of nothing, nothing. What
Speaker 1: was your take on I'm Toby. Well, you know, unlike you,
Speaker 1: it was entirely through Ned's eyes, right, you know, for me,
Speaker 1: a lot of that stuff was about like, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: so Ned's given me some really. Ned has these great details,
Speaker 1: amazing and the way he has tagged these details to people,
Speaker 1: uh is a very natural storyteller's kind of instinct. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, in a different world, Ned would be a
Speaker 1: great screenwriter because of how he sort of sees detail
Speaker 1: in people and what he chooses to associate with them.
Speaker 1: I would ask him, especially early in the process, right,
Speaker 1: you know, he's taking all these amazing risks and he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's spending months and months, you know, stinking
Speaker 1: like a biker and hanging out with these assholes who
Speaker 1: clearly he doesn't like, you know, and uh and and
Speaker 1: and putting himself in danger and wrecking his family for
Speaker 1: this case. Right and why? Right? Like why what was
Speaker 1: the what was the driving motivation? Again? If you think
Speaker 1: about if you if you said to if you said
Speaker 1: to me, you know, James, you know, I want you
Speaker 1: to be a hero, and I want you to take
Speaker 1: these drugs off the streets, right, you know, you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can. I can buy into that on some level,
Speaker 1: But what was the what was the reason that you
Speaker 1: were so devoted to doing this and so willing to
Speaker 1: kind of, you know, dig as deep as you did.
Speaker 1: And I could never get a straight answer right like
Speaker 1: it was, there was never a satisfactory kind of response
Speaker 1: from Ned in any of that. Years go by and
Speaker 1: I had flown out to Michigan to do sort of
Speaker 1: my last round of interviews with him before getting started
Speaker 1: on the book. And at that time he had a
Speaker 1: home in the northern part of the Lower Peninsula, Uh,
Speaker 1: this beautiful hunting cabin that he has um and he
Speaker 1: took me around the whole property, and he had done
Speaker 1: things like um, you know, like the woods had been
Speaker 1: clear in these fairways almost like a golf course, and
Speaker 1: then he would plant all of these different herbs and
Speaker 1: flowers and seeds that would be perfect for deer. So
Speaker 1: the deer would come out of the cover of the
Speaker 1: woods and into these places that are basically like a
Speaker 1: Schmoger's board for them, a buffet all you can eat
Speaker 1: of their most favorite plants, and they'd be completely exposed
Speaker 1: while they were eating them, and there'd be a little
Speaker 1: hide built down at the other end of the fairway
Speaker 1: so a hunter could kill the deer if they wanted to.
Speaker 1: It was a hunter's paradise. And inside the lodge, which was,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to be conservative and say it
Speaker 1: was a five thousand square foot home, he had a
Speaker 1: taxidermy of almost anything that has ever taken a breath
Speaker 1: that you could shoot at. The bears, dozens of them,
Speaker 1: these creatures with you know, beautiful horns that had killed
Speaker 1: in Africa, lions, you know, just if he could kill it,
Speaker 1: he had shot it. And I got up to Pea
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like a horror film, like a Frank
Speaker 1: Osman movie, right, like where these things are kind of
Speaker 1: going to come alive in the darkness because every squares
Speaker 1: surf at some point, like a bat had fucking died
Speaker 1: in the gutter. And he had a taxi journey as
Speaker 1: a joke, right. It was, it was, it was, it was,
Speaker 1: you know, it was beyond creepy, it really was. And
Speaker 1: what I suddenly realized is that this was why Ned
Speaker 1: was an FBI agent, right That badge was his hunting
Speaker 1: license for his favorite thing. To hunt, which is human beings.
Speaker 1: And starting from the youngest age, some of his earliest memories,
Speaker 1: Ned will tell you that his granddad would let him
Speaker 1: stand up in a backpack while they would go out
Speaker 1: bird hunting, right, Like, you know, Ned's very earliest memories
Speaker 1: are you know, hunting. Wow. And the thing that you
Speaker 1: know that being an FBI agent really meant to Ned
Speaker 1: was this opportunity to go out and hunt the most
Speaker 1: intelligent and the most dangerous animal on earth. And when
Speaker 1: you listen to how he talks about the people that
Speaker 1: he would, you know, go out and get right. What
Speaker 1: are the words that you've heard one hundred times out
Speaker 1: and as all, this guy's a killer. How many times
Speaker 1: have you heard that? Yeah? That's he loves that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: But I agree with you, you know, it's interesting. I
Speaker 1: think it's insightful, and I agree that there's the challenge
Speaker 1: of it as the hunter. But he also has this
Speaker 1: side of him that he befriends these guys um you know,
Speaker 1: Lee Rich being one of them. But also there was
Speaker 1: a biker that I met that you describe in the
Speaker 1: novel Who Who knew Toby who remains close to to
Speaker 1: this day. I think he is he does have that
Speaker 1: hunting instinct, but simultaneously he also some of these guys
Speaker 1: he seems to form like a really intense and lasting
Speaker 1: bond with um that's somewhat but only after he's only
Speaker 1: after he's bagged him. You know, it's like now their
Speaker 1: you know, their teeth have been pulled, their their declaude.
Speaker 1: You know, I I you know, it's not a perfect metaphor,
Speaker 1: and it never could be, but you know, I don't
Speaker 1: I think there's a deep humanity to Ned. I don't
Speaker 1: say that to say that he's some sort of sociopath
Speaker 1: who just likes to go out and kill people or
Speaker 1: hunt them down, but that the thrill of the chase
Speaker 1: is the is everything to him. You know, even after
Speaker 1: he leaves the FBI, he you know, there's that whole
Speaker 1: second chapter of his you know, work in Columbia that
Speaker 1: was you know, fascinating and done almost without any kind
Speaker 1: of supervision or the ages and protection of any kind
Speaker 1: of an agency. That he was working freelance because he
Speaker 1: was so hooked on that adrenaline rush that he had
Speaker 1: been you know, living for all of those years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if there's a part two of this, like you know,
Speaker 1: we said that the novel ended it in kind of
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger, with the woman showing up and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: I need your help. I have someone down in Columbia
Speaker 1: who's in trouble. What is that kind of the elevator
Speaker 1: pitch for that sequel. Ned did go to Columbia to
Speaker 1: start a fishing business after he left the FBI, and
Speaker 1: once he gets down there, he ends up doing a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of contract work for customs and sort
Speaker 1: of falls very naturally back into being an FBI agent again,
Speaker 1: or rather an undercover operative again, and is bombed at
Speaker 1: the Hilton. He tells this amazing story of being out
Speaker 1: on this little island off the coast of Columbia where
Speaker 1: the bugs were so intense at night that you had
Speaker 1: to like go to sleep in a hammock wearing a
Speaker 1: wetsuit and uh and cover your face with a towel
Speaker 1: so that bugs couldn't eat you. There was there was
Speaker 1: a lot of detail in that post FBI part of
Speaker 1: Ned's life which was really really interesting, and because it was,
Speaker 1: you know, being done under his own auspices was infinitely
Speaker 1: more dangerous and I think he must have reached a
Speaker 1: point where, you know, what you and I would consider danger,
Speaker 1: wouldn't even you know, wouldn't even get his heart rate up,
Speaker 1: and he you know, I think that the adrenaline hit
Speaker 1: that he was looking for was was probably going to
Speaker 1: take him to get and killed down there until you know,
Speaker 1: he kind of gets his ship together. And I thought
Speaker 1: that would have made a very interesting follow up to
Speaker 1: the first book. Is there anything else that I that
Speaker 1: I didn't ask that you thinks worth mentioning, or that
Speaker 1: occurred to you, you know, in the last little bit
Speaker 1: while you heard the podcast or afterwards. I think the
Speaker 1: thing that I found just so wonderful about the podcast
Speaker 1: was the way you really dug in and went past
Speaker 1: those those blocks that I never did. I'm so gratified
Speaker 1: that I kind of get some of the answers on
Speaker 1: a story that you know, I lived with so intimately
Speaker 1: for so very long, three drafts of a script and
Speaker 1: a novel. Is you know that's that's six eight months
Speaker 1: out of my life spent, you know, in Ned's head.
Speaker 1: To finally kind of see the larger perspective that you
Speaker 1: delivered was intensely gratifying to me. I was able to to,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of turn off any personal ego issues
Speaker 1: and uh and and really just enjoy what you did.
Speaker 1: So I thank you for that. Well, I mean, likewise,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel grateful to you. I mean, I
Speaker 1: it was the novel that that that drew me into
Speaker 1: this story, and and as again as I said to
Speaker 1: you earlier, I felt like it was just a faithful
Speaker 1: and kind of almost uncanny channeling of Ned's psyche. There
Speaker 1: were times I was working on the story and I
Speaker 1: had thousands of pain I mean, the amount of transcripts
Speaker 1: I have is crazy. But often when I want to
Speaker 1: try to really get a sense of how Ned thought
Speaker 1: about something, I would go to the novel. And I
Speaker 1: think that's just a reflection of the fact that you
Speaker 1: spent so much time talking to him and thinking about
Speaker 1: him and kind of channeling his character. I was very
Speaker 1: much appreciative to have it and to get a chance
Speaker 1: to talk with you. Well, this has been a real
Speaker 1: pleasure for me as well. After my talk with James,
Speaker 1: I kept thinking back to what he said about Ned's
Speaker 1: hunting lodge and the rows and rows of taxidermied animals.
Speaker 1: That's all true. By the way, Ned told me. There
Speaker 1: were eleven bears, two moose, two mountain lions, three caribou,
Speaker 1: two Arctic wolves, five to six deer, and seventeen assorted
Speaker 1: animals from a hunting trip in Africa. And that's just
Speaker 1: to name a few he sent pictures. Actually, imagine the
Speaker 1: Museum of Natural History in New York City, only a
Speaker 1: lot more crowded. So look, I get why James picked
Speaker 1: up on this, why he saw Ned as the hunter.
Speaker 1: And I even pose this question straight to Ned, is
Speaker 1: this why you did it? The thrill of the hunt?
Speaker 1: And Ned, well, he kind of answered me in that
Speaker 1: classic roundabout Ned way where he started telling one story
Speaker 1: and then another about the bikers, how he spent years
Speaker 1: with guys like this. I think Ned was reminding me that, Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: in the Hollywood version of this story, he might be
Speaker 1: cast as the Count Zarov character you know from the
Speaker 1: movie The Most Dangerous Game, the guy who hunts humans
Speaker 1: for fun. In reality, Ned was more like, well, a babysitter,
Speaker 1: That's how he put it, anyhow, because there was never
Speaker 1: a moment where he could just breathe easy, fix a drink,
Speaker 1: and stare into the glassy eyes of a head that
Speaker 1: was mounted on his wall. This bonus episode of Deep
Speaker 1: Cover was produced by Jacob Smith, Amy Gaines, and Jennifer
Speaker 1: Sanchez and was edited by Karen Shakerji. Original music and
Speaker 1: our theme was composed by Louise Gera. Mia Loebell is
Speaker 1: Pushkin's executive producer. Special thanks to Heather Faine, John Schnarz,
Speaker 1: Carli Mgliori, Christina Sullivan, Eric Sandler, Maggie Taylor, Nicolemarano, Jason Gambrel,
Speaker 1: Martin Gonzalez, and Jacob Weisberg at Pushkin Industries. Additional thanks
Speaker 1: to Jeff Singer at Stoway Entertainment. Deep Cover is a
Speaker 1: production of Pushkin Industries. Subscribe to Pushkin Plus and you
Speaker 1: can hear deep Cover ads free. You'll also be able
Speaker 1: to binge all of season two at once find Pushkin
Speaker 1: Plus on the deep Cover Show, payee in Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus. To find more
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Jake Halpern And if
Speaker 1: you've listened this far, here's one more clip from deep
Speaker 1: Cover Season two. Mob Land launching January twenty fourth, So Nick,
Speaker 1: can you just tell me like if I'm a guy
Speaker 1: who owes you money for a juice loan and I
Speaker 1: have not paid you. Can you just give me an
Speaker 1: example of what you would say to me, Like I
Speaker 1: tell you, Jake, you know you got twenty four hours
Speaker 1: to come up with that money. If you don't come
Speaker 1: up the money, I'm gonna come bust your fucking head
Speaker 1: or pop your eyes out and eat him like grapes
Speaker 1: Day